North Carolina is union light

Over the past couple of years, union organizing efforts at companies such as Amazon and Starbucks have garnered a good deal of attention. The efforts have led some commentators to predict union influence will increase along with the number of employees they represent. Based on new data from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), these predictions haven’t yet come to fruition—if they ever will.

Membership data

The DOL report shows the union membership rate—the percentage of wage and salary workers who were members of unions—was 10.1% in 2022, down from 10.3% in 2021. The total number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.3 million in 2022, increased by 273,000, or 1.9%, from 2021. The overall number of wage and salary workers, however, grew by 5.3 million (mostly among nonunion workers), or 3.9%.

The disproportionately large increase in the number of total wage and salary employment compared with the increase in the number of union members led to a decrease in the union membership rate. The 2022 unionization rate (10.1%) is the lowest on record. In 1983, the first year where comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1%, and there were 17.7 million union workers.

Carolinas ‘lead’ the way

Among states, Hawaii and New York had the highest union membership rates (21.9% and 20.7%, respectively), while South Carolina and North Carolina had the lowest (1.7% and 2.8%, respectively).